


Delusions of a Practical Nature

by KnightNight7203



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, if the title doesn't make you nervous maybe it should, the family that weathers the apocalypse together stays together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26296234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnightNight7203/pseuds/KnightNight7203
Summary: This wasn’t how today was supposed to go. He was supposed to get through the next layer of his equations, finally narrow down the limits he’s been searching for for the past month and a half. But maybe he should sit down with his family more often. For the first time in a long time, he feels something akin to peace.In which Five doesn’t always have to make it through an apocalypse alone.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 116





	1. Chapter 1

The first face he sees in the morning is usually Diego. Number Two is annoying like that—all up in everybody’s business, searching for somebody, _anybody_ , to boss around.

Or, worse, somebody to make a stupid _connection_ with.

It usually makes him nauseous, because he hasn’t had his morning coffee yet (or alcohol, which he’s learned also does the trick). He usually snaps—ideally not so much that Diego goes away, but enough to make his general displeasure _very_ clear. He’s been fine-tuning the effects of his sarcasm for a while now. Sometimes, when he can’t quite understand why a response causes others to react the way they do, Dolores even helps him out—so at this point he’s pretty much got his _prickly-but-not-completely-aloof_ persona down pat.

He is businesslike—an asshole, even—but not outright cruel. He makes it no secret that he considers his siblings to be idiots, but never suggests that they’re entirely a waste of space. And as a result, he can maximize his efficiency without being completely cut off from the most important variable. He does what he needs to do, but he keeps the _why_ firmly in his mind.

In this way, he shapes his character into exactly what he needs it to be. On the rare instances he lets himself reflect, he thinks, somewhat proudly: _maybe that’s what it means to grow up._

Today, though, he can’t quite bring himself to react harshly to Diego’s presence when he blinks himself awake at first light. The weather got just a little colder last night—there’s no frost or anything, but it was enough to make little goosebumps rise up on his arms and legs. It somehow managed to bring him right back to the way things used to be, before. So sue him for being a little nostalgic—just once isn’t going to kill him.

Probably.

“What’s the plan for today, brother?” Diego asks, like he does most mornings, completely oblivious to the emotions racing through Five’s head. Diego always wants to know the plan, just so he can fuck with it. Sometimes he wants to suggest something other than what Five has scheduled—he’s organized a supply run and they need to leave before Luther hijacks it, or has Five considered that higher ground is better for both concentrating _and_ spotting enemies in time? Diego loves to be in charge—craves it, even, after years of being put second. There are days when Five immediately tells him to piss off, just to bypass that whole arena of conversation.

“Same old,” he offers today instead. To his surprise, his voice is almost soft. “Math and math, and then more math.”

Sometimes—or maybe more times than he can count—he wishes he had a different answer to give his brother. He wishes he could trust someone else with the agenda, just for a day. So he can rest a little. So his relationships could start to feel a little more balanced, instead of this collection of shadow puppets set in the background to his main act.

And yet—he can’t. Not yet, anyway.

“That’s a shame,” Diego says. “We think the leaves might be turning. We were going to go for a walk later—see the colors.” He smiles, gentle. “Remember colors, Five?”

Five wants to scoff—doesn’t Diego know that reflecting on the seasons is a colossal waste of time when the fate of the world hangs in the balance? Or maybe he wants to scream instead—it’s not his fault that the weight of this was left squarely on his shoulders. ( _Or was it? Maybe it’s_ all _his fault—_ )

But he looks right at Diego’s face—and it’s blurred, almost, between the child Five knew at the Academy and the man Diego becomes ( _became_ ). Sometimes it’s so hard to amalgamate the two. He remembers his shock at seeing that adult face slack and ashen, buried under concrete and staring blankly ahead—

He doesn’t scoff. He doesn’t scream. He swallows thickly instead.

“I can’t,” he says quietly. “I think you know that.”

Diego just nods.

He watches as Five inhales vodka, straight from the dusty bottle, probably much more than is good for him. He stands silently as Five inspects his options for breakfast, then decides better of it and resolves to wait until lunch. Then Five starts on the equations, and Diego doesn’t like math, so he must just wander away.

When Five glances up to give his eyes a rest, his brother is gone.

* * *

Klaus doesn’t exactly like math either—he actually hated the structure and expectations of schooling in general—so it surprised Five at first when he started showing up just as the numbers got complicated. It was weird, how he always seemed to know that Five was struggling.

It was also weird how his energy—chaotic, irreverent, even a little inappropriate at times—seemed to focus Five rather than distracting him. Klaus had a habit of saying completely crazy things that made absolutely no sense on the surface—things that had absolutely no business making any sense at all, in fact—but once Five thought about it for a few minutes, it actually led him to just the breakthrough he needed.

A coincidence, he figured. Just a coincidence. But sometimes he wondered if there wasn’t something else going on.

Today, Klaus just blinks down over Five’s shoulder—Five starts when he sees him in the periphery, he hadn’t heard him approach. They stand like that for a few minutes, almost close enough to touch, and Five imagines he might have felt some body heat from the arrangement if the whole idea wasn’t so completely foreign to him.

Then the corners of Klaus’s mouth curl up suddenly, and he taps an equation with a ragged fingernail.

“I don’t like the looks of those eights,” he says, ambling out of the shadow of Five’s Equation Wall to sit in the light filtering in through the window. “It’s like an army of evil snowmen, coming to freeze the breath in your lungs.” He pauses, reflects on that for a minute. “Hmm, that’s strange. Did I hear that in a fairytale somewhere, or—?”

“No offense, Klaus, but it sounds like a shitty fairytale.” Five cuts him off immediately, fearing a rambling explanation that will only become less coherent as it goes on. He may also roll his eyes. “And _snowmen_ , of all things, have absolutely nothing to do with my math.”

“And yet?” Klaus looks at him expectantly. He leans back in the sun, palms outstretched, and Five can just make out the “HI” and “BYE” tattooed there—something he’d never really expected, to be honest, but that truly makes a lot of sense if you understand Klaus’s sense of humor. He doesn’t know a whole lot about Klaus’s powers—he’d always had to prioritize maximizing his own, _before_. But he thinks that maybe such a sense of humor about death is a much-needed element at the end of the day.

Five doesn’t know if _Literal Human Ouija Board_ is how he’d personally choose to describe Klaus’s abilities, and he’s sure _he’d_ never get another tattoo after what they went through as kids. But if the shoe fits …

He’s getting distracted.

Five heaves a sigh, then swallows his protests and runs a few numbers again. Sure enough, one of the eights is a little suspect—though obviously not for any reason Klaus had suggested.

“Actually, you’re sort of right—that’s meant to be an ’s’ in the second line. Space is a factor of time.”

“I know,” Klaus says, smugly.

Five thinks about tearing out a bit of his hair, or maybe sticking out his tongue, but he settles for rolling his eyes again. “Then why didn’t you just _say_ that?” he demands.

Klaus shrugs. “I don’t actually understand math.”

 _Of course._ He’s useless.

Five gets back to work.

Things look a little clearer with that fixed, but something still isn’t working. And Klaus, whose eyes are closed now (but they’ll open again if only Five calls his name, _they will_ ) doesn’t seem to have any more wisdom to offer. So Five sighs and puts down his marker.

“I think I’m going to run to the store,” he says. He keeps his face blank even as relief fills him when Klaus’s eyelids flutter. “We’re almost out of supplies.” Every time he goes out, Five drags back as much as he can possibly carry—it’s just his style, and the food is going to keep the same whether it’s safely in his possession or stacked on distant shelves. But he goes through it quicker than he’d like, and he’s always afraid to let his stockpile get too low just in case the unexpected happens. It’s always best to prepare for the worst. He’s learned that the hard way, several times over.

Klaus flaps his hands in distress, the “HEY” and “SEE YA” inked there blurring before Five’s eyes.

“You know I can’t follow you in there,” he says. “I’m working on my tan. I can’t waste these precious daylight hours, man!”

Five does know—and he also knows that isn’t the real reason. Klaus is deathly afraid of small spaces, and the dark. They’d all teased him about it as little kids, mercilessly, and Five had never really understood what it was all about until the sight of shadowy holes opening up in the ground started filling his own stomach with dread as well.

He gets it now, and he only has a few ghosts to worry about most of the time.

“Don’t waste the sun,” he says, almost fondly—though he’d deny it, of course, if anyone noticed. “I’ll be back soon.”

And then he blinks out into the street, leaving his brother behind.


	2. Chapter 2

Being a hero was something that Five took to naturally once upon a time—not the “saving people” so much, but the thrill of the chase, of being an asshole to someone who unequivocally deserved it, of being _better_ than the people who stood there helpless and quaking in their boots while evil was done to them, at their expense. He loved being in control—nothing happened to _him_ without his permission, at least not in the field. But over time that tendency starts to fade, until it’s no more a part of him than a childhood shoe size or a favorite food he hasn’t had in years.

It’s funny that the “saving people” thing is all that’s really left now. And he hasn’t been in control—not really—in so, _so_ long.

Every once in a while, though—when he’s running through the streets ahead of a storm, or crawling through an abandoned building that looks more like a deadly maze than the cozy apartment it might have been once—a fraction of the old thrill will return.

Hell, sometimes, even going to the store makes him feel a little bit like a superhero again.

He calls it a store because he can still picture what it looked like before, and because there’s a bit food left piled on sloping, crumbling shelves there, not because the experience is anything like he remembers. There’s the cockroaches to contend with now, and the dust, and the heat. Still, it could be worse—there’s still some food _there_ , after all. He doesn’t know what he’ll do when the canned goods all run out of all the places he goes to find them—move to another city, he supposes, or maybe just lay down and die like he refused to do ( _should have done_ ) at the start.

No. He won’t be doing that. He can’t.

He’s just being dramatic.

And yet every time he makes this long walk, knowing there’s less and less waiting for him on the other end, he sure does have a lot of time to think it over.

This used to be an entire block of buildings, all the way across town from the Umbrella Academy, and the store was only a small part. But the falling and the grinding and the shifting over the years have resulted in a single entrance on the opposite corner from the shelves that he knows still have food on them. To get from one end to the other, he has to climb over ragged chunks of concrete, duck around rebar, rub his knees bloody against shattered glass, and hold his breath as what’s probably asbestos rains down from the crumbling ceiling.

It’s not the safest place he’s stolen from over the years. (Though it’s not really stealing if there’s nobody around to miss it in the first place, is it?) But it’s definitely one of the most welcoming places of all the ones that are left to scavenge, especially ones within walking distance of his home base.

And anyway, it’s safe enough if he’s careful. By now, he knows the path through like the back of his hand.

It takes him maybe twenty minutes to wriggle his way into what’s left of the store, another ten to sort through the remainder of the cans and load some of the best and some of the worst-tasting options into an oversized backpack he brought along especially for this purpose. His thinking is that he should ration both, so he never has a day where the options are completely depressing (or completely ideal, but hey, that’s fine). Before he knows it, he’s on his way again, picking up the pace because he just did this and he’s confident now.

He should know better by now.

He’s so confident that he misses a step and kicks a little brick out of the way. It echoes in the darkness, once then twice, and ends its journey in a disturbing little _boom._ For a split second after that, he convinces himself that he’s fine, that it doesn’t matter—a lot of the debris he passes is load-bearing, sure, but some must just be debris. Then he looks to his left, and sees Luther.

Five’s heart sinks down somewhere into his stomach.

Here’s the thing: if Luther’s here, it means there’s trouble. Luther spends literally all his time watching the signs. His brother is careful in a way he’s never quite managed to be—analyzing every action and reaction, every change in the wind or rumble of the earth, always adapting to keep everyone he’s responsible for and everyone he cares about out of harm’s way. It’s always seemed so effortless to him. He and Diego may have squabbled about who got to give the orders, but only Luther seems to grasp the weight that such a responsibility carries.

Once upon a time, Five cared only for himself, and now that he has to think of others to get through the day, he still doesn’t do it as good a job as good old Number One.

“I think we’re in for it,” Luther says. He’s running next to Five, long legs keeping up easily, and though Five is panting, he’s not even out of breath. (Sometimes he forgets just how _big_ Luther becomes—it’s hard for him to wrap his head around.) He _knows_ there’s no need to run—at least, there wasn’t, until Luther brought premonitions of incoming disaster. But Five doesn’t like to be out in the open for very long. He needs to be in and out, and get back to base. Where he’s comfortable.

Where he’s safe.

Because he’s not safe here.

Half of his brain is focusing on the light of the street, just a pinprick in the distance, but getting closer every step he takes. The other half is wondering how the hell Luther is moving so comfortably through this space when he himself can barely stand. But then there’s a groan and a metallic shriek and the sky is falling, and he throws himself into a ball and doesn’t have time to think about anything at all. Around him, the world caves in.

“—ive. Five. _Five!”_

There’s dust in his nose and grit in his eyes, but he can _hear_ fine, fuck you very much. Luther doesn’t have to repeat himself.

“What?” he chokes out, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. He squints into a web of broken glass next to him and sees bright green eyes staring back.

“You okay, buddy?”

Five tries to nod, and knocks a loose brick onto his head for his trouble. He groans.

“Never better.”

He wiggles his fingers. He wiggles his toes. All there and accounted for—he barely even lied.

Five is still focusing on remembering how to breathe, but Luther is already planning, because that’s what he does. “Can you blink out?” he asks, and Five thinks about it. He really should have come up with that idea himself.

Then he tries, and— _typical—_ it doesn’t work.

“I’m too tired,” he bites out. In reality, it probably has more to do with stress—terror, even—but he’d rather die than tell Luther that.

There’s the sound of more rubble shifting as Luther stretches out a hand, then a sigh of frustration. “I can’t get to you,” he says. “I’m sorry, Five. I don’t know what to do.”

He would help if he could, Five knows, and it stops him from getting too angry about the situation. He’s just too far away, and the whole thing is too unstable. Luther may be pretentious, and self-important (and that’s coming from _him_ ), but the one thing he never was is selfish. He hates to see people in pain.

And sure enough, Luther’s deep blue eyes, shining through the darkness, are sad.

Five loves to see his siblings frustrated, but that’s only when _he’s_ the one causing the frustration. In this case, it’s definitely not as satisfying.

“Don’t worry, Luther,” he says, trying to be reassuring and failing miserably due to an appalling lack of practice. “We’ll get out of here.”

And they will. He knows it.

He just doesn’t know _how._

* * *

“What are you two idiots doing in there?”

It would be a lie to say that Five is usually in any way happy to hear Allison’s voice. First of all, Allison’s voice is _annoying_. She always ended up taking Dad’s side, for absolutely no reason he or the others could fathom, and the things she rambles on and on about—movie stars and musicians, fashion designers and royal families—are entirely inane. She’s obsessed with basically anybody _other than_ their family. There’s no doubt in his mind that if anyone gets them all killed some day, it’s going to be her—she’ll see a celebrity on the street and turn away for an autograph just at the moment they need her most.

Except.

Except her powers are terrifying—they protect her, and they petrify him. That’s the other reason she’s not his favorite sibling to be around. She’s used her powers on all of them over the years—dumb things, like shutting them up during arguments and making them run through the halls in their underwear, and more serious demands, like forcing them to make out with overzealous fans or eat live animals when she got really angry.

Five has always given what he takes, jumping into her room to pawn her favorite stuff and setting her up to look stupid in front of Dad when she messed with him. But the moment a rumor leaves her mouth—the moment his free will evaporates from his body, leaving that stiff foggy blankness behind—he’s filled with a dread so deep and so overwhelming he can barely stop himself from being sick when he comes back to himself.

On second thought, few people would probably even consider messing with Allison. Maybe she won’t get them killed after all.

Of course, the other thing she has working in her favor is the fact that, prissily lording it above them all or not, Allison is _competent_. Which is probably how she found them, and how she’s now standing at the other end of a Five-sized tunnel through the rubble.

He doesn’t know how he didn’t see it before. But he sees it now, and it takes him almost no time to scramble out into the daylight, dragging his backpack of cans clumsily behind him. He drops it as soon as it’s safe and squats for a moment on all fours by her side.

“You’re welcome,” she says with exaggerated sweetness, and he wants to swat at her, but he’s also scared of her and so he doesn’t.

Instead, he turns back to look for Luther among the debris, but he doesn’t see him anywhere. Was Luther trapped further away than he remembers? Did he shift the rubble in his escape, crush his brother? He knows what Luther looks like buried under the crumbling remnants of a building, and he doesn’t know if he can go through that again—

Then he turns to the left and finds Luther already standing next to Allison. He wills his heartbeat to go back to normal before he does something stupid, like break down.

“You could get out all along?” he demands, aiming for calm and landing somewhere angry instead. He doesn’t know how—it doesn’t make sense—

Luther just shrugs.

Allison, in all her infinite wisdom, seems to sense an incoming disagreement frothing just beneath the surface. She isn’t big on fighting—in retrospect, maybe that’s why she always took Dad’s side—and so she lays a gentle hand on Luther’s oversized arm to calm him down at least. “Shall we?” she says, smiling as she gestures down the road in the direction of home with her other hand.

Luther nods, a stupid expression on his big stupid face, and starts off after her. Five grumbles a little bit, but eventually swings the backpack up over his shoulder and follows.

It’s like he said earlier—the less he has to be out in the open, the better. He’s certainly not trailing behind because it’s nice to finally let someone else lead.


	3. Chapter 3

They pretty much make it home before Five realizes something else is wrong. When it hits, it hits hard, though. He’s been injured before, knows how it works—first the adrenaline wears off, then the shaking begins, and only then will the area experiencing massive blood loss and/or tissue death and/or infection and/or some other medical nightmare make its searing pain known.

He may have some experience in these matters.

In this case—he looks down to check, and sees a big tear in his pantleg—it’s his shin. He hobbles the last few feet to the door, praying nobody asks him why it looks like he’s playing apocalypse hopscotch on the crumbling pavement. But nobody even looks his way.

Luther and Allison vanish almost immediately to do who knows what in a place he’s sure only they know about. They’ve always been like that. He’s glad, though—he doesn’t want them to know that he’s hurt, because then they’ll worry, and he doesn’t want them to think about him when what they need is to be thinking about is how to survive out here in a dead, deadly world.

He can do this himself. He always does.

He pulls off his boot and sock and rolls his pant leg up, revealing a sizable gash on his leg. He pours some alcohol on it, hissing, while he mulls it over—to stitch or to cauterize? His sewing kit is almost empty … but his matches are running low, and there’s not enough sun left in the sky to use his magnifying glass. It’s been so warm that he hasn’t needed to light fires to survive the night …

Stitches it is, then. He dumps some leftover alcohol on his needle, threads it, and begins.

Every time he does this, he tells himself over and over that he’ll get used to it. He will get used to it, damn it. That hasn’t happened yet, though. Sometimes he has to close his eyes (even though he _knows_ it’s a bad idea) just so he doesn’t have to look at the needle pulling at his torn flesh. The wiggling as the thread pulls through really, _really_ freaks him out.

(Sometimes he throws up, but he hasn’t eaten anything today, so he’s sure he’ll be fine.)

It looks worse than it hurts. But it also hurts a lot. He makes a little noise—not a cry, not even a whimper, just the tiniest expression of discomfort. Then he glances around, guilty, and starts when he sees that Vanya is sitting across the room watching him.

“Long day?” she asks—quietly, like she’s not sure she has the right to speak up. She almost blends right into the shadows, in her dark clothes, with her long bangs draped over her face. And he’s noticed, lately, how she’ll only break the silence to talk about him—she never brings up her own thoughts and experiences, and he knows it’s because she can’t believe he could find it within himself to care.

Sometimes it bothers him. Sometimes, though he knows it’s wrong, he finds it comforting. Today, he’s just hit with the overwhelming urge to cry.

“You have no idea,” he says, voice weak, but he holds it in. Crying is for children, or for people who actually deserve the release. It may _feel_ like he’s been going through it, but in all honesty, today hasn’t been that much different from any other day, stretching almost as far back as he can remember.

Her eyes trace their way up the cut on his leg, but she doesn’t ask about it. That’s one of the things he loves about her. If he brings it up, she’ll probably know all the right things to say, but until he does she recognizes that it’s off-limits.

She frowns a little, then looks away. “Do you need help?” she asks, staring deliberately at the wall.

Well. Almost off-limits.

He shakes his head.

“Talk to me?” he says, not entirely sure if she will. And for a moment she’s silent, biting her lip like she doesn’t have anything at all to say.

And then she begins, and it’s like a dam has broken. It’s exactly what he needs.

She tells him about college—something she spent half a dozen chapters on in her book, not because it had anything to do with the Umbrella Academy, but because her time at the conservatory is what really made her _Vanya_ and she wanted to make it clear to readers that she was a person outside of her siblings and their father. She has all kinds of stories from her time there—helpful professors, crazy professors, the first friends she ever made, the first times she skipped meals and bedtimes in favor of something more exciting and infinitely more precious. She tells him about performances she’s done, about how good it feels when she plays alone in a dark room with nobody to hear her music. There’s no violin here—he doesn’t even really remember what violins sound like, honestly—but he hears the distant, haunting notes of _something_ drifting on the thick smoky breeze.

This wasn’t how today was supposed to go. He was supposed to get through the next layer of his equations, finally narrow down the limits he’s been searching for for the past month and a half. But maybe he should sit and listen to Vanya more often. For the first time in a long time, he feels something akin to peace.

As the sun sinks lower, Luther and Allison wander back into the main room looking happy and light. Diego slips inside shortly after, twirling a knife between his fingers, and Klaus sits up from behind the sofa where he’s presumably been napping since the early afternoon.

For a split second, out of the corner of his eye, Five even thinks he sees Ben—dark hair, kind face, height and build not entirely clear. Then he remembers that, no, Ben’s dead. It was all in Vanya’s book. He knows what’s real.

Other than that, though, they’re all here.

He finishes his final crooked stitch, pulls a dented can of peaches from his dirty backpack, and allows himself a small smile.

* * *

Of course, it doesn’t last. It never does—not here, and certainly not _now._

The earth trembles a little at first—it does that, sometimes, you just have to get used to it. Then the bigger shudders start. Dolores shouts something, and he throws his arms over his head to protect himself from the dust and debris that get kicked up by the vibrations. He coughs. His nose is running, or maybe bleeding. His siblings’ soft voices are swallowed up by the noise.

When he opens his eyes, they’re all gone.

Once he can breathe again he hobbles over to Dolores, where she reclines elegantly in the lawn chair he salvaged from a department store near where he picked her up. The earthquake barely even rattled her. She’s cool like that. Sometimes, he wishes he could be more like her.

She looks at him sympathetically, and he glowers, but he’s actually feeling quite sorry for himself as well. He normally manages to hold onto them all a little longer than this, isn’t usually completely alone until at least after night falls. He’s not looking forward to grinding through the rest of the evening on his own, and she knows this. She’s worried about him.

He’s worried, too. It’s getting harder and harder to remember the little things—eye colors, shapes and sizes, tattoos. What happens when he can’t picture them at all?

“You know they’re not real,” she says softly—not cruel, just practical. It makes sense. _He’s_ practical. He doesn’t know why it bothers him so much.

“Not now,” he tells her. He’s painfully aware. And yet, he can’t quite bring himself to let it go. “It’s not forever, though. Time is funny like that.”

She purses her lips, and he knows she disapproves of the general implications of playing house with hallucinations. But sometimes, it can be practical _not_ to give up on the crazy dreams. Whatever gets him through the day, he thinks. He smiles.

“Just watch, Dolores—they will be.”


End file.
